Machine Dreams

by Jayne Anne Phillips

  He supposed they’d acted grown-up long before they really were. But in some ways Kato was never a kid. Her mother had died a long time before, and she and her brothers had raised themselves. Shinner didn’t impose many rules, and he drank. Billy had cleaned him up a few times to save Kato’s doing it. Shinner wasn’t a mean drunk but he was fairly dependable; twice a month he’d drink himself into a stupor. One of the brothers or even Kato ran the billiard room then, though it meant she served beer. She hadn’t turned drinking age until recently, but the cops knew the story and looked the other way.

  Billy had gotten used to it all gradually, so nothing had seemed odd. Only now he wondered, because he wondered about everything. Shinner had bought the building outright with an inheritance years before, and the family lived upstairs. He had no overhead and a pretty good business; there weren’t money problems but the rooms upstairs looked impoverished. A rug, one long couch, a cheap maple coffee table, and a color TV console in the living room. Arrangement of blue plastic flowers on the console. The kitchen with its Formica table and chairs, its prefab cabinets and old sink. A dishwasher, outcast and new, off by itself on one wall. A low ceiling full of pipes. Kato’s bedroom: white child’s bureau, big stuffed animals, presents from Billy, on the floor. A double bed on a frame. Dimestore full-length mirror he’d helped her mount on the back of the door, the closed door. They kept a box of rubbers under the bed, though Shinner would never have bothered looking.

  He liked Billy well enough. Sundays, Billy ate dinner with them in the kitchen, Rice-a-Roni and pork chops Kato cooked in a big frying pan. The two brothers, three and four years older than Kato, ate when they passed through the kitchen. The boys more or less roomed above the billiard hall and kept no particular hours. The older one was 4F—basketball, hell, Shinner said, he messed up that elbow leaning on too many pool tables—and worked in the mines near town. The other played football at Lynchburg State. Weeknights, whoever was around ate downstairs at the counter: hot dogs, fries, hamburgers made at the grill, and beer. Sundays, anytime, Billy loved being with Kato above the billiard hall. He liked all the nearly empty rooms. He loved how she looked, like she didn’t need anything else around her.

  Last spring, senior year, when it was certain he’d go away to college, things had gotten bad between them. She flirted with other guys and went out with some. He wasn’t about to ask her why or yell at her; he just got his class ring back and stayed away. Now she was going out with some city cop who hung around the billiard room; cops ate lunch there. Billy saw her now and then, not much; she didn’t hang around with the high school crowd anymore. The cop was seven or eight years older—apparently they went to Winfield to supper clubs, and skeet shooting. Maybe it wasn’t so strange; cops around town had always gone easy on Shinner, and the whole family had reason to be nice to them. But what did she think was happening to her?

  Danner had asked Billy, around graduation, if he’d thought of marrying Kato. He hadn’t. He didn’t want to be married. He couldn’t see Kato married either, to anybody. But nothing was right anymore.

  His parents were glad when it ended, especially Jean. She’d talked to him about it in July or so. She was sorry, she told him, but after all, he and Kato were so young. And Kato might be a nice person—her father and Jean had gone to high school together and, no matter what anyone said, there wasn’t a better person in this town than Shinner Black—but Kato had never had a mother to teach her certain things. Would she ever have made the kind of home Billy had grown up in, the kind he might someday want?

  Billy didn’t know what he wanted. Jean had gone on speaking softly, with such worry in her voice that Billy didn’t say anything back, only nodded. But all he could think of while she talked was the sound of her footsteps, every early morning all summer, up the stairs from the basement. Ever since they’d moved from the house on Brush Fork, almost two years ago, she’d slept down there in a single bed. Billy hadn’t paid much attention before, but that summer he began to notice everything. He got up early, drove the fifteen miles to his job, opened the swimming area by nine. But before he could drive to the park, where it was quiet and lush, he had to listen to his mother’s footsteps. He lay in bed, waking up, and listened. Her steps were heavy with a resignation he couldn’t fathom. Later he sat by the river and heard the rush of water. He stared at the moving surface, and finally all other sounds left his mind.

  After he went away to school, he missed the river badly.

  He was in Bellington by four in the afternoon. November light went fast and it was already dusk. On impulse, he drove through an alley off Main Street and pulled up behind the billiard room. The barbecue grill he’d bought the previous spring was still on the fire escape landing; it would rust in the winter if she didn’t take it inside soon. Didn’t seem right to use the fire escape steps, so he went around front. He didn’t want to walk through the billiard room and see people and talk, so he went in the other door, up the dark, narrow stairs that led to the upstairs apartment. His walking was loud in the enclosed hallway. Before he got to the top to ring the bell, she opened the door and looked down. He stopped, waiting.

  Dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, barefoot, she hugged her arms in the chilly hallway. “Billy.”

  He thought he must seem like a fool. He said nothing and leaned against the wall. She looked like she’d been sleeping, her hair tousled. It occurred to him she might be with someone. “Anyone here?”

  “No. I was taking a nap.” She walked down two steps. “Billy, is anything wrong?”

  He shook his head. “Just wanted to talk to you. Haven’t seen you in a while. How you doing?”

  “Okay.”

  “Can I come in, or do you want me to go?”

  “You want to come in?” She shrugged, flustered. “Sure. Come in.”

  He followed her inside. She shut the door behind them and he looked around. After the carpeted dorm with its modernistic furniture, the square room looked even more spare. She sat down on the couch a little nervously; he sat beside her but not too near. “So,” he asked, “how have you been?”

  “Pretty good. I’ve been working downstairs, but last week I got a job at the newspaper.”

  “Yeah? Reporting?” Keep talking, he thought, it’ll get better.

  “Just typing, but maybe later they’ll let me do more. I mean, at least write up birth announcements and things.”

  “Kato, that’s good.”

  She nodded and took a cigarette from a pack on the table. She tamped it down and lit it, then picked up an ash tray and put it on the cushion between them. She tucked her legs under her and turned toward him. “So. You met any nice people up there?”

  At first he thought she was mocking him, then understood again that she was nervous. He didn’t want her to be, but it encouraged him. She was asking him about girls. “Well, yeah, I mean it’s real easy. But no one special.”

  Her face betrayed no relief. “How is school?”

  “I quit school this morning.” It was the first time he’d said it. He leaned a little forward and put his hands on his knees, then clasped them. He realized he was sitting as his father did, and he sat back. “Maybe I shouldn’t have come by, but I wanted to talk to someone before I told my parents. I guess I wanted to talk to you.”

  She didn’t answer right away but looked across the room at the window. Then she tapped the ash of the cigarette and looked at him. “Why did you quit?”

  “I didn’t want to be there. I was just waiting until December really, to find out what my number was. Like, if I did what I was supposed to do and sat through all the classes, my number would be high, and then I could quit.” He shook his head. “Stupid. The number is going to be the same, whatever. If it’s low, there’s no deferment anyway. School isn’t going to help. And later, I don’t want these grades on my record. I haven’t really tried. I couldn’t get myself to care.”

  “You thought about what you’re going to do?”

  “Maybe stay up there, get
a job. I’ve got the dorm room anyway until the term ends. Or I could come back here. I might go south after Christmas. I could always get a job tending bar in a resort town.”

  “What would you do if you stayed in Bellington?”

  He felt flushed, listening to her simple questions. He heard her talk with an almost physical ache of pleasure. “Would you like it if I stayed around?” He asked uncertainly; he was sure she’d tell him the truth.

  She raised her brows in puzzlement and spoke slowly. “I don’t know. It would be kind of complicated for me.”

  “You mean because of this guy you’re going out with.”

  She held the cigarette high in her hand and the smoke, a thin, constant smoke, disappeared into the room. “You know, it wasn’t like things were great for me over the summer, when you never even came around. I used to just talk to him once in a while, when he came in for lunch. He was new around here and kind of quiet, old-fashioned. Finally he asked my father if he could take me out sometime.”

  Billy imagined Shinner’s befuddlement and smiled. “What did Shinner say?”

  “He said, ‘It’s no business of mine. Ask her.’ ” Kato laughed.

  Billy nodded. He said, after a pause, “I kept wondering if it wasn’t strange, going out with a cop. Does he get upset about some of your habits?”

  She put the cigarette out. “I don’t do dope in front of him. I don’t smoke much dope at all anymore. Turning into a drinker, I guess.”

  “What?”

  “Not like that, Billy. I’m not that dumb.”

  Maybe Shinner was worse. “I never thought you were dumb at all,” Billy said softly.

  Far off, they heard a siren. Fire truck barreling up Quality Hill and on out. The corners of her mouth tightened. “Sorry. It’s just that Dad is driving me crazy lately. Soon as I save up some money at the paper, I might get my own place.”

  “He drinking more?”

  She opened one hand in a dismissive gesture. “Anyway. You ought to stay around if you want to. Don’t let it depend on me, but I mean, maybe the Park Service would hire you back.”

  Billy let himself imagine it. “I liked the Park Service, even if the pay was bad. I guess they need people in winter. Be nice there in the snow.”

  She nodded. “They patrol the park in jeeps. You have to have four-wheel drive on those roads.”

  “Yeah.” He touched her shoulder, then moved his hand away. “You could ride around with me and help put out hay for the deer. Or maybe not. Your friend would get mad.”

  “He doesn’t tell me what to do,” she said flatly.

  “That would be a mistake,” Billy agreed.

  She smiled a little and leaned forward to touch the edge of the ash tray.

  “Does he try to tell you what to do?” Billy watched her hand, her long fingers.

  “Not exactly. He just … expects me to be more, like, ladylike, than I am. He seems surprised sometimes. I don’t know, he’s nothing like me. He says most girls he knows only sleep with the one they’re going to marry. I told him I was kind of married to you, if he wants to think of it that way.”

  “Is that how you thought of it?”

  She looked up guiltily, as though she’d admitted too much. “No. Not until lately anyway.”

  It was dark outside. The room had gotten dark, and it was cold. The small neon light that advertised Black’s Billiards blinked on and off downstairs, throwing up a muted rosiness that came and went beyond the living room windows. They could hear, through the floor, the soft clicks of pool cues, the thumps of balls dropping into pockets. The sounds were so known and so familiar, so comforting. Billy felt an edge release inside him. “Quiet down there,” he said. “No jukebox?”

  “Broken,” Kato said. “Dad hasn’t got it fixed yet.”

  “Well, I better go.” He started to stand but she stood first.

  She walked over and said, from above him, very near, “I don’t mean we should change things, but I wish you wouldn’t leave yet.”

  He stood to meet her halfway but they were on the couch again and he couldn’t hold her close enough, hard enough, his face pressed tight against her, sounds of surprise and relief in his throat. She felt more real than anything had felt in all these months.

  Though it was only ten, his mother’s house was in darkness. He stood on the stoop and considered sleeping in his car but, no, he’d driven here to tell her. He rang the bell. Inside, the hallway light went on. As the doorknob turned and the door swung open, he realized she might have wakened out of sleep to loud and unexpected sounds. “Mom,” he called, “it’s just me, Billy.”

  “Billy?” She was at the door, her face in shadow. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong. Everything is fine.”

  “What do you mean? Don’t you have classes tomorrow?” She opened the door wide and stepped back to let him enter.

  “No, not tomorrow. I’m sorry I woke you up.” He took his jacket off and hung it over the newel post, and hugged her. “You’re turning in early these days.”

  “I wasn’t really sleeping.” She looked at him confusedly. “Did you eat dinner? Are you hungry?”

  “No, I’m not hungry.”

  She drew her robe closer around her, the long red woolen robe he remembered from last year and other years. She’d worn it every night, sitting in a straight-backed chair in the small den, reading or knitting while the television droned low in a corner. Last winter, Billy had come in late to find his father asleep in the downstairs bedroom, and Jean in the den with both doors of the little room shut, to keep the heat in. Sometimes he sat down with her to watch the last of the eleven o’clock news or a few minutes of a late movie. She was quiet and relaxed; Billy felt as though they were alone in the house. Later he walked upstairs soundlessly on the carpeted steps; Danner was at college and the whole upstairs was his domain.

  “I don’t even have a bed made for you,” Jean said. “I’ll have to get some sheets out of the closet.” She turned.

  “Mom,” he said, and waited until she faced him. “I withdrew from school today.”

  “You what?” She sat down on the piano bench in the living room.

  “Here’s the refunded tuition, and I’ll pay you back for the dorm costs.” He took two hundred-dollar bills from his pocket and, standing beside her, put the money on top of the piano.

  She made no move and only stared at him, bewildered.

  He sat down on the couch opposite her. “I knew during the summer that I’d made plans for school because there was really no other choice, with the draft. I was accepted and I thought I should go, give it a chance. The longer I went to classes, the surer I was—that I don’t know what I want to do.”

  “Billy, no nineteen-year-old kid has to decide in the first semester of college what he wants to do. You’re there to take your time and find out what you want to do.”

  “I found out I don’t want to be in school.”

  “When you find yourself in basic training you may wish you were in school.”

  He smiled at her. “That doesn’t work anymore, Mom. No more school deferments after December. Wouldn’t matter if I was number one on the honor roll. Quitting school doesn’t affect my draft status one way or the other.” He paused, watching her. He didn’t want to sound fresh. “Listen, it’s a waste of money for me to go to college right now.”

  The tick of the kitchen clock was loud in the house. She looked at him angrily. “Since it’s my money, why don’t you let me decide when it’s wasted. And I know they didn’t give you any refund this late.”

  He didn’t answer.

  She sighed. “Isn’t it a waste to quit now, when the semester is nearly over?”

  His eyes were tired and he fought the impulse to touch them. He felt as though he’d been en route to this house for weeks. “When I really decide, for myself, that I want to go to school, I want to start clean. These grades, these courses some adviser signed me up for at registration, mean nothing to me.” />
  His mother looked at him levelly. “Were you failing, Billy? Why didn’t you tell me if you were having trouble? You always said you were doing fine.”

  “I was. My grades weren’t good but I wasn’t failing.” Now he did rub his eyes, and he touched his forehead. He could smell Kato on his hand, the perfumed, musky smell of her neck and throat. He didn’t want to think about her now; he wanted to talk to Jean and make her understand. “Mom, if it turns out my number is high, I want to work for a year. I’ll get a job, either here or maybe farther south, and save some money. If my number is low and I go into the army, I don’t want to have spent these weeks going to classes. Either way, I did the right thing.”

  Jean’s hands were open in her lap. She looked down at her palms and said slowly, “Is this my fault? Have I made things so confusing?”

  “No, Mom. Maybe I went along with going to school because I didn’t want to cause trouble when everyone was upset anyway. But keeping on with that mistake isn’t going to help—”

  “With my mistakes?” she asked gently.

  “I don’t think you made a mistake. You did what you had to do. I just wish you’d understand—I did, too. I’m in a bind like yours, in a way.” He looked up at her, as though for help with words. “I guess that doesn’t make any sense.”

  “No, it does.” She looked at the floor and bent over to pick up a bit of fuzz from the carpet. Absently she held a blur of gold threads, her fingers touching lightly. “Lord,” she said, “I hope you haven’t given yourself a terrible birthday present.”

  “I don’t think I have.”

  She nodded. Across the gulf of the floor between them, her gaze was direct and quietly frightened. She looked more vulnerable than he’d ever seen her. Billy suddenly wondered if he’d ever sit across some room listening to his own kid and get scared.

  “It’s going to be all right,” he told his mother now. “Things will turn out.”